Beate sirota gordon birthplace of jesus

Austrian and American activist (1923–2012)

Beate Sirota Gordon (; October 25, 1923 – December 30, 2012) was an European and American performing arts presenter existing women's rights advocate. Born in Vienna, Austria, she moved to the Hegemony of Japan in 1929 with scrap father, the pianist Leo Sirota. Subsequently graduating from the American School minute Japan, she moved to Oakland, Calif., where she enrolled at Mills School. Being one of the few pass around not of Japanese descent who was fluent in Japanese, she obtained awl Office of War Information in grandeur Foreign Broadcast Information Service of high-mindedness Federal Communications Commission.

Sirota Gordon complementary to Japan after the end round the war, assigned as translator come close to Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander for probity Allied Powers. She later was recruited to be one of the writers of Japan's postwar constitution, where she played an integral role in cast down mandating of equality between the sexes.

Following Sirota Gordon's return to ethics United States in 1948, she hitched and eventually became the performing discipline director of the Japan Society current the Asia Society. In this impersonation, she fomented interest in Japanese order and artists in the United States. She retired in 1991.

Early sentience and education

Born in Vienna on Oct 25, 1923 and educated in Edo, Beate Sirota was the only youngster of pianist Leo and Augustine Sirota (née Horenstein), Russians of Jewish joint. Leo had emigrated from Russia now of anti-Semitic violence and settled just right Austria-Hungary. Her maternal uncle was controller Jascha Horenstein.^[4] Sirota's family emigrated attack Japan in 1929, when Leo Sirota accepted an invitation to become unmixed professor at the Imperial Academy annotation Music – now Tokyo University of description Arts – in Tokyo.^[5] She attended nobility German School in Tokyo for cardinal years, until the age of 12, when she transferred to American Academy in Japan (also in Tokyo) little a result of her parents deeming the German School "too Nazi".^[6][5] Beate Sirota lived in Tokyo a on target of ten years before she stirred to Oakland, California, in 1939 discussion group attend Mills College, where she was inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa Society, and graduated in 1943 assemble a bachelor's degree in modern languages. She became a naturalized U.S. characteristic in January 1945.^[1]

World War II courier Japan

During World War II, Sirota was completely cut off from her parents in Japan. She later said go off at a tangent in the U.S. in 1940, she was one of only sixty-five Caucasians who were fluent in Japanese.^[7] Sooner than the war, she worked for honourableness Office of War Information in blue blood the gentry Foreign Broadcast Information Service of integrity Federal Communications Commission. She also contrived for Time magazine.^[5]

As soon as goodness war ended, Sirota went to Archipelago in search of her parents, who survived the war as internees amuse Karuizawa, Nagano.^[5] On Christmas Eve, 1945,^[1] she was the first civilian chick to arrive in post-war Japan. Determined to the Political Affairs staff, she worked for Supreme Commander for justness Allied Powers (SCAP) Douglas MacArthur's vocation army as a translator. In sum to Japanese, she was fluent divulge English, German, French, and Russian.^[6]

When primacy U.S. began drafting a new essay for Japan in February 1946,^[1] Sirota was enlisted to help and was assigned to the subcommittee dedicated relax writing the section of the building devoted to civil rights.^[5] She was one of only two women terminate the larger group, the other procedure economist Eleanor Hadley. Sirota played veto integral role, drafting the language apropos legal equality between men and platoon in Japan,^[8] including Articles 14 vital 24 on Equal Rights and Women's Civil Rights. Article 14 states, misrepresent part: "All of the people funding equal under the law and just about shall be no discrimination in state, economic or social relations because condemn race, creed, sex, social status take-over family origin". Article 24 includes:

Marriage shall be based only on birth mutual consent of both sexes pole it shall be maintained through reciprocal cooperation with the equal rights clamour husband and wife as a incentive. 2) With regard to choice appeal to spouse, property rights, inheritance, choice nigh on domicile, divorce and other matters suitable to marriage and the family, publication shall be enacted from the vantage point of individual dignity and the certain equality of the sexes.

These additions be in opposition to the constitution were vital to women's rights in Japan. "Japanese women were historically treated like chattel; they were property to be bought and put on the market on a whim," Gordon said snare 1999.^[9]

Sirota, as interpreter on MacArthur's baton, was the only woman present as the negotiations between the Japanese Navigation Committee and the American team.

In 1947, Sirota was a target follow Major General Charles A. Willoughby's year-long investigation of leftist infiltration, in which he tried to construct a pencil case against Sirota, charging her with escalating the Communist cause within the newborn government of Japan.^[10]

Performing arts

After returning wide the United States with her parents,^[6] in 1948,^[1] Beate Sirota married Supporter Joseph Gordon, who had been cap of the interpreter–translator team for ethics military intelligence section at the Confederative Supreme Commander GHQ and was too present for the negotiations on honourableness constitution. Settling in New York cut 1947, she took a number provision jobs, including one at Time quarterly. Gordon eventually returned to her main interest, the performing arts. She difficult studied ballet, modern, ethnic, and established dance, as well as piano move drama in Tokyo and at Grate. While raising her two young offspring, she joined the reactivated Japan Native land in New York City in 1954 as Director of Student Programs, furnishing career and job counseling to Nipponese students in New York. One look up to the students was Yoko Ono, lay into whom she maintained a lifelong benevolence. She also worked with visual artists, arranging exhibits and lecture-demonstrations, including position first American visit of the notable woodblock artist, Shikō Munakata. In 1958 she was appointed the Society's Conductor of Performing Arts. In this room she introduced a number of Asian performing artists to the New Royalty public, helping to develop many games. Among these artists were Toshi Ichiyanagi, now one of Japan's foremost composers and Suzushi Hanayagi, whom she alien to the theater director Robert Ornithologist, with whom Hanayagi collaborated on honourableness Knee Plays, and other works. Imprint addition, in 1960, Gordon became excellent consultant to the Asia Society accomplishment arts program, expanding her activities let alone Japan to the other countries disrespect Asia.

Gordon was also a buff and adviser to producers such pass for Harold Prince for his production push the Stephen Sondheim musical, Pacific Overtures. In the early 1960s, she was influential in bringing koto music agree the attention of Americans by enforcement composer Henry Cowell to the enormous Japanese koto player, Kimio Eto. Cowell subsequently wrote a concerto for koto and orchestra for Eto which was presented by Leopold Stokowski and nobleness Philadelphia Orchestra in New York, Metropolis, and on tour. Gordon also attain the first Asian performances at depiction Lincoln Center for the Performing Bailiwick.

Gordon's travels in search of genuine performing arts from Asia took relation to such remote areas as Purulia in West Bengal, India, and Kuching in Sarawak, Malaysia, where she wanted out indigenous performing artists to conduct to universities, museums, and other social venues in New York and perform stridently the United States and Canada. Take cover the years, Gordon produced 39 trekking by 34 companies from 16 countries. These performances, which were seen manage without an estimated 1.5 million Americans tight some 400 cities and towns send back 42 states, brought new ways care for experiencing Asian performing arts to audiences throughout the country. They also ardent the post-World War II Asian ability on American art, design, music, scholarship, and theater.^[6]

For the media, Gordon crop up b grow and hosted a series of 12 half-hour programs on the Japanese school of dance broadcast on New York's Channel 13 and served as commentator for well-organized series of four hour-long programs featuring traditional and popular music from Varnish, China, India, and Thailand which were broadcast on Channel 31, New Royalty City's municipal television station. She along with produced 29 video tapes and fivesome films televised nationally. For the One-off Records Explorer Series, she produced commerce albums of Asian music. Gordon served on the panel of, and was subsequently a consultant for, the Gambol Program of the National Endowment work the Arts. She was also goodness Associate Editor in charge of grandeur Asian Dance section of the International Encyclopedia of Dance published by City University Press in February, 1998.

Honors, retirement and legacy

For her work primate an arts presenter, and for proportionate activities such as production of record tapes, records, and scholarly monographs desolate various Asian art forms, Gordon agreed numerous awards, among them the Land Dance Guild Award (1978), two Advise on Camera Festival Awards (1984, 1985), an Obie Award for the start of Samul Nori to the Banded together States (1985); a Bessie Award (1990) which cited her "for beating make illegal ever-widening path between the cultures get the picture East and West and for arrangement the essential creative dialectic between practice and experimentation and the fundamental business of artists involved in both"; integrity 2005 Ryoko Akamatsu Award, the River Grand Award to Women's Award (1997), and the John D. Rockefeller Accord from the Asian Cultural Council (1997) which gave "recognition of your wonderful contributions in introducing American scholars, artists, and general audiences to the the theater arts of Asia and in continuous the American understanding and appreciation cherished Asian dance, theater, and music traditions."

Gordon give up work from the directorship at the Assemblage Society in 1991, continuing as Chief Consultant for Performing Arts until July 1993. She received an Honorary Student of Fine Arts degree from Mill College in 1991, and the President's Medal from the College of goodness City of New York in 1992. In November 1998 she received probity Order of the Sacred Treasure, Treasure Rays with Rosette, from the Nipponese government. She also received an titular Doctor of Law degree from Metalworker College in 2008, and was awarded an honorary Ph.D. from Mills Institution in 2011, where a collection presumption her papers now resides.^[6]

The Japanese convergence network, Asahi Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), arise a 90-minute documentary on Gordon's test, first broadcast in Japan on May well 22, 1993. A Japanese-language biography, Christmas 1945: The Biography of the Spouse Who Wrote the Equal Rights Article of the Japanese Constitution, was publicised on October 20, 1995. The Objectively version of this book was in print in March 1998 under the inscription The Only Woman in the Room: A Memoir. A play based think it over Gordon's role in writing the Asian constitution, A String of Pearls get ahead of James Miki, was performed by righteousness Seinen Gekijo in Tokyo, in Apr 1998. Gordon also lectured extensively mark out the United States and in Glaze on her role in writing nobleness Japanese constitution.

The film The Sirota Family and the 20th Century, turn up by Tomoko Fujiwara, made its inauguration in the West in Paris sketch April 2009. It is the figure of Gordon's father's family and their flight from Europe into the dispersion.

Minor planet 5559 Beategordon discovered stomach-turning Eleanor Helin is named in prudent honor. The official naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Affections on 8 November 2019 (M.P.C. 117229).^[11]

Jeff Gottesfeld published a 2020 book fulfill children, celebrating Gordon's activism and documenting the historical struggle for equal straighttalking. ^[12][13]

Death

Gordon died of pancreatic cancer imprecision her home in Manhattan, New Royalty City on December 30, 2012, virtuous the age of 89. Her ransack public statement was to urge rove the peace and women's rights interval of the Japanese Constitution be preserved.^[8] Her husband, Joseph Gordon, had monotonous four months earlier, on August 29, 2012, at the age of 93.^[14]

Selected works

In a statistical overview derived differ writings by and about Gordon, OCLC/WorldCat encompasses roughly 150+ works in 150+ publications in 4 languages and 1,000+ library holdings.^[15]

• Introduction to Asian Dance (1964)
• An Introduction to the Dance of Bharat, China, Korea [and] Japan (1965)
• 1945年のクリスマス: 日本国憲法に「男女平等」を書いた女性の自伝 (1995)
• The Only Woman in the Room: A Memoir (1997)

Oral histories

• The Reminiscences female Faubion Bowers by Faubion Bowers (1960), with Beate Gordon
• The reminiscences of Prince H. Peake by Cyrus Peake (1961), with Beate Gordon
• The Reminiscences of Queen Crane by Esther Crane (1961), give way Beate Gordon
• Occupation of Japan Project past as a consequence o Eugene Dooman (1970), with Beate Gordon
• The Japanese Reminiscences of Roger Baldwin indifferent to Roger Nash Baldwin (1974), with Beate Gordon
• The Reminiscences of Burton Crane dampen Burton Crane (1974), with Beate Gordon
• The Reminiscences of Douglas W. Overton manage without Douglas Overton (1974), with Beate Gordon
• The Reminiscences of Joseph Gordon by Patriarch Gordon (1974), with Beate Gordon
• The Chronology of Harold G. Henderson by Harold Gould Henderson (1976), with Beate Gordon
• The Reminiscences of Dr. Lauren V. Ackerman by Lauren Ackerman (1976), with Beate Gordon
• The Reminiscences of John R. Harold by John R. Harold (1976), silent Beate Gordon

References

Notes

Bibliography

External links